Lord of the Rings

a: weed (skunk)
b: masking that he only ever bathes in the filthy withywindle once in an entire Age

I just think hes ok being an unknown, i mean is he a dick?

Gandalf, iirc, has him down as not present enough in middle earth events to safely deposit the ring with, he hasn't malevolence but on his scale of events this is just petty shit

iirc gandalf says something along the lines of "he might misplace the ring or give it to a squirrel"

one thing i like is that when gandalf leaves the hobbits near the end of the book (before scouring of the shire) his excuse is that he has to go visit bombadil. (sorry hope that isn’t a spoiler?) and yeah, they actually spend time talking about him at the council of elrond. it’s somehow wonderful that the wisest characters in the story take this ridiculous person so seriously.

Yeah, plus the fact that Bombadil and Farmer Maggot are friendly with each other. All of these implications of hidden roots and deceptive appearances.

I dunno if I agree with calling Bombadil a green man archetype. Treebeard is a much more obvious example, for one thing, and I think Tolkien was aiming for something different and more abstract with Bombadil. He's not meant to logically fit.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned earlier, but I always liked Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil

That’s great, Andrew. Never read that before. Truly chilling final line.

Ok, that essay is hilarious

three chapters into Return of the King
such a great sequence, Tolkien is so GOOD with impending doom, all that dread & anticipation of the coming battle is so heavy

although this part: Arwen makes Aragorn a standard that he carries to the Path Of The Dead: so obv me thinks its going to be v exciting

BEHOLD MY STANDARD

(unfurls)

...

ok cool its a **black unremarkable standard** great thanks for that, it’s a real winner

arwen is totally a goth

Give it time, VG, give it time...but yes, totally a goth.

Is this the banner that's a magic eye picture under a blacklight oh shit I've said too much.

Best viewed when having smart drinks.

mid-70s paperback slipcase set, same covers as my childhood one, ordered and taking its time getting here. Revving up by reading the Tom Shippey Author of the Century book

Anyway while we're on the subject

https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/lord-of-the-rings-albums-list

Also for everyone but maybe especially for those finishing a read/reread, I thought this was very lovely.

I recently read the unpublished epilogue to Lord of the Rings, a chapter framed as a conversation between Sam Gamgee and his daughter. It is really beautiful and bittersweet so I illustrated it! You can read it as a scroll here: https://t.co/wxiWXacLbR
1/7 pic.twitter.com/S5L3PE0pqH

— Molly Knox Ostertag (on hiatus) (@MollyOstertag) February 16, 2021

Excellent.

started a re-read recently. Had forgotten the exquisitive pettiness of Bilbo's pass-agg leaving gifts for the locals. Here's a bookshelf for all the books you stole from me, motherfucker

The main thing that stuck out from me from the appendices on my first readthrough at 14 was the headfuck of T saying "by the way, all those names I called the characters were just English approximations of their Westron names. Sméagol was actually called Trahald. Frodo's real name is Maura Labingi. Fuck you."

Maura Labingi, Assistant Director of Human Resources, Whole Foods, Austin TX, join LinkedIn to view this complete profile

Xp lol yeah thats some sidestep to just drop in

Don't forget his faithful companion Banazir, Ban for short.

"We hates the Labingi!"

Small brain: Sauron is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work
Medium brain: Morgoth is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work
Galaxy brain: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is the principal antagonist in Tolkien's work

"i know it was you otho, and it breaks my heart"

re: smeagol/trahald, i wonder if he was still called “gollum”? since that’s just a reference to the weird noise he makes.

only 1 chapter left before my mini-bookclub finishes Return of the King.

I read “The Scouring of the Shire” chapter today and i’m shook! that was so heavy. and the allegory is really not disguised at all, seems like one of the few times in the books where Tolkien is really openly working out his post-war grief.
also after the whirlwind wrapup festival of the previous two chapters, going back to like, full story mode was quite welcome, i was afraid the whole last section of the book would be yadda yadda’d to the end lol

saruman really is a petty cunt though. jfc

Quite so!

And your timing is good with that chapter when it comes to...not this NEW episode of the podcast about to appear but next month.

ooh yay! :D

I normally read about 30-40 books a year, which is utterly impossible now I have a toddler, so instead my plan to read 3-4 very long books instead: Middlemarch, Jonathan Strange, 20 Years After, and... Lord of the Rings, which I've never read.

A question: I loved the early and middle parts of The Hobbit but was kinda bored to tears by the battle at the end (and don't get me started on the awful resolution to Smaug's story). Is there any of the early, funnier Tolkien in LOTR (or something that's different but still interesting)?

There is, and there's more of an engrossing plot, but there is also way more ponderous battle stuff

and don't get me started on the awful resolution to Smaug's story

OUT.

Our next episode in a couple of days on the Rankin-Bass Hobbit reminded me about how as I read the full book as a kid after seeing their version slowly but steadily (over multiple rereadings) got me used to the slightly deeper waters in the book towards the end -- hints of power politics and the like. I think he manages that pretty well!

Apropos of nothing I discovered this tweet yesterday, and the accuracy

oh man idk about this Hobbit recut pic.twitter.com/nuck6MH4bT

— bimbo baggins (@strongbadegirl) August 6, 2018

The lord of the rings is not much like the Hobbit

This is not a criticism of either

Ok, that's reassuring actually

The beginning of LOTR is similar to "the early, funnier Tolkien" but the bulk of LOTR is definitely and intentionally a more serious affair with higher stakes. There is some discussion upthread that many people's (including mine's) favorite bit of the LOTR is the first book's gradual subversion of the earlier, funnier Tolkien by the growing sense of terror and doom.

gradual subversion of the earlier, funnier Tolkien by the growing sense of terror and doom

Okay very intrigued now

OUT.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, April 3, 2021 4:38 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha! Although would happily hear a defence of Smaug's "oh, er, somebody random shot him, let's say" ending (but maybe this isn't the thread)

very beginning, actually

(or something that's different but still interesting)

About 90% this.

The scenic journeying stuff from The Hobbit is still there, but the tone is very different. Not so much "I'm going on an adventure!"

yeah doomy Tolkien was a cool discovery for me - the entire first half of Return of the The King is all turning the screws & he’s so good at it

As Tolkien himself says in the introduction to the revised edition to LOTR, it took him a while to get to the growing terror/doom phase -- once he had finally cracked things with "The Shadow of the Past" in particular (and in the process essentially accepted that the original Gollum scene in the Hobbit couldn't stand, which required its own revision in turn), then it all started to really gel. The early drafts of the starting chapters really show how he steadily embraced the deeper stakes the more he worked through it -- at one point the original 'Black Rider' that Frodo first encounters was a heavily cloaked Bilbo, and Strider/Aragorn was a Hobbit called Trotter. So it really could have been a much lighter story in the end.

Doomy Tolkien was weirdly enough essentially where he started -- the original Book of Lost Tales, however randomly lighter its surrounding framework at the time, essentially established that a key part of his mythology wasn't merely a Biblical level fall of sorts but destructive futility on the part of the side of good, at least as defined by the Elves in rebellion who seek to fight Morgoth and basically not only lose but worse. The lighter sides were always there and recurred at many points in the 1930s -- Farmer Giles of Ham, Roverandom, Mr. Bliss, even the Father Christmas letters plus The Hobbit all show this. It's the dovetailing of this sense with the grim, strange sense of historical and mythological romance in what he'd created with his other work that makes LOTR what it is.

I definitely enjoyed that sense of Tolkien “discovering” the story as it revealed itself to him throughout the books

Ned on some LOTR trip like some 6th C. Scholar that knows all the apocryphal books that got excised from the New Testament.

Ned on some LOTR trip like some 6th C. Scholar that knows all the apocryphal books that got excised from the New Testament.

It's what I do! I've got five shelves of Tolkien/Tolkien-related books here for a reason! :-D

Although would happily hear a defence of Smaug's "oh, er, somebody random shot him, let's say" ending (but maybe this isn't the thread)

Oddly enough, though we don't address this point directly, our latest episode brings up another example where we talk about a part one of us thought was better in the Rankin-Bass version than the book in terms of basic story-telling mechanics. Similarly it can be argued that by introducing Bard directly in Rankin-Bass when the Dwarves arrive in Lake-town, however briefly but as a person with a sense of authority, like there wasn't a mayor figure at all, provides a bit of needed focus. I'm fine with how Bard appears in the book, essentially suddenly but set up briefly as someone with a rep for the serious and concerned, but I can see how it seems random. (At least it wasn't the bizarrely extended elaboration in the Jackson films but that's another story, nothing against Luke Evans...)

I definitely enjoyed that sense of Tolkien “discovering” the story as it revealed itself to him throughout the books

We've noted this a few times over the podcast's run; my cohost Jared is particularly at pointing this out -- characters suddenly appear in his stories and then he starts thinking about them more in revisions or wondering how they fit into deeper cosmologies. Galadriel is like this, the Ents and Treebeard as well. Even Ghan-buri-Ghan, who almost literally appeared out of nowhere after one short draft where there's only some shadowy half-seen guides.

(xpost) Yeah, I thought something similar too - if he'd turned up a few pages before, it would've seemed less anticlimactic.

It took me a bit of page-flipping to realise that Smaug was actually dead, and who killed him. (I must admit I was skimming a bit by that point.)

Although I suppose I'm just inured to big movie climaxes and that's not really Tolkein either, thank goodness

It's all part of the setup for the actual climax. Smaug is dead, the Lonely Mountain is miraculously open for the taking, the dwarves barely had to do a thing. But Lake Town has been destroyed, which wouldn't have happened if Bilbo and the dwarves hadn't showed up. And it's thanks to a Lake Towner that Smaug is gone. So Thorin finds himself under an unanticipated obligation, which quickly turns ugly, and the real conflict begins.

Right, and that bit of extra complexity as opposed to simply 'we killed the big dragon hooray we're done' makes it even more of a really great story. There's even a sense of in-universe criticism of the setup, with Bilbo's appreciably practical wonderings -- partially prompted of course by Smaug himself in their confrontation -- of how exactly the whole division of the treasure or the profits was supposed to happen. By the time he makes the Arkenstone offer, he's not only showing awareness of that but illustrating by example why it's all so destructive -- and essentially earning that final Bilbo/Thorin exchange to the full.

One thing I like about the main resolution in LOTR is that we never have a 'bunker' scene (to put the WWII comparison he always hated, I admit). I'm fully cognizant that there's a counterargument that this is part of an intrinsic flaw where the Enemy as broadly stated is inhuman and unknowable -- our orcs episode the other month touches on this in various ways and we'll yet say more -- but for the purposes of the story, I appreciate how in essence the destruction of the Ring and Sauron's fall happens incredibly swiftly and with little detail. Unlike in Jackson's film, where the moment is streeeeetched out and all, we don't 'see' Gollum and the Ring's destruction, Sam only sees a brief and confusing vision of Barad-dur's collapse, then we pull back in subsequent chapters first to the battle at the Black Gate and then finally to the moment where Faramir and Eowyn watch on the walls. They're all moments of high drama but they are, ultimately, moments.

Anyway, it must be true

pic.twitter.com/vJcrFIOqJf

— Shannon 🦉 (@shay3322) April 3, 2021